It’s summertime, now, and thoughts of grilling fill the heads of many of us. I’m not immune to this, and recently gave into the temptation to upgrade my barbecue (to this  little beauty, which I’m very pleased with) and made a pledge to do more, and more interesting grilling this summer.

The fates must have been listening, as Latin Grilling, by Lourdes Castro arrived in my mailbox shortly afterwards, followed by The Japanese Grill, by Tadashi Ono and Harris Salat and The One Block Feast, by Margue True and the staff of Sunset Magazine. All three books have something new and intriguing to offer the summertime cook, and I’m going to enjoy exploring them over the next couple of months.

Latin Grilling
10 Speed Press: $22

I’ve been interested in Latin grilling since I saw a couple of travel shows on the cooking of the region, including Anthony Bourdain’s entertaining No Reservations, in which he and his brother travelled to Uruguay and had various adventures involving large amounts of grilled meat. This book is an excellent introduction to the regional cuisine, and I am impressed both by its breadth and layout.

Lourdes Castro, author of Simply Mexican and Eat, Drink, Think in Spanish, has put the book together as a series of menus taken from ten Latin regions. Each one would make a fantastic group dinner, or you could pick and choose and combine your favourites. She starts with a Mexican Frontera Cookout and follows with a Yucatecan Barbecue, Nicaraguan Ranch Roast, Cuban Cookout, Northern Andean Barbecue, Peruvian Grill, Patagonian Asado, Argentine Grill, Chilean Seafood Cookout and finishes with a Brazilian Rodizio.

Each menu has drinks, starters, main courses, condiments and side dishes and a dessert. I think this is a great organizational scheme – it could easily have been organized by country or by type of ingredient, but doing it this way puts the recipes in context and pairs them with complementary dishes.

To do it right, you will have to source some spices and ingredients, as she tries hard to make these as authentic as possible, but since I live in a modest-sized town in the Pacific Northwest without much of a Latin community, and I was able to track down poblano chiles, tomatillos, ancho and chipotle chili powder and even annato seeds, it should be doable just about anywhere (warning, wear gloves when chopping chiles or rubbing chipotle powder in meat or you’ll have a most curious finger tingling all night…)

Recipes that caught my attention immediately were her Chipotle-Rubbed Skirt Steak Tacos, Citrus & Oregano Marinated Split Chicken, Achiote-Marinated Chicken Wrapped in Banana Leaves, what she calls an absolutely authentic sandwich Cubano, roasted Potatoes with Huancaina Sauce (classic Peruvian home cooking) and the Argentine Arugula, Garlic & Green Onion Stuffed Flank Steak.

I’ve already cooked several meals from this cookbook: she has a great guacamole recipe, and the steak tacos were as spicy and flavorful as the name (and my tingling fingers) suggest. I’m very much looking to cooking more.

You’ll notice that this is not a book for vegetarians, though she does have a good number of vegetable side dishes. But anyone familiar with Latin grilling in general would probably have guessed this in advance.

Buy the book

Amazon US: Latin Grilling
Amazon Canada: Latin Grilling

The Japanese Grill
Ten Speed Press: $25

This book is a exploration of the art of the Japanese Grill. Grilling is a long-established tradition in Japan, where traditional homes revolved around the irori, or open hearth fire pit. Many people are familiar with yakitori, skewered pieces of mostly chicken, but there are grilled dishes in all sorts of Japanese cooking. In Vancouver, just across the water from where I live, izakayas, Japanese sort of gastro-pubs, have been flourishing in recent years, and grilled foods feature strongly in the tapas-like dishes they serve.

It’s laid out by ingredient, starting with classic Yakitori (mostly poultry), then Poultry, Fish & Seafood, Meat (beef, pork and lamb), Vegetables and Yaki Onigiri, those addictive little crunchy grilled rice balls, and finally side dishes like salads and spinach.

What’s interesting is that this is a bit of a hybrid. Written by a Japanese-born chef, Tadashi Ono, and an American food writer, Harris Salat, both of whom are fans of American style grilling, the book not only showcases some traditional Japanese recipes but also takes the Japanese style and flavors and uses them to adapt a number of traditional American grill dishes. So you’ll find burgers with wasabi ketchup, several short rib recipes and even Japanese-style barbecued baby back ribs, their flavors boosted by soy sauce, mirin and miso.

Vegetarians can get a reasonable selection of dishes out of the book also (though of course it is rather meat-heavy, as most grilling cookbooks are). There is a section entirely on vegetables, featuring grilled eggplant, corn, asparagus, mushrooms and a series of Japanese-flavored dishes baked in foil. Not to mention the intriguing collection of side dishes, featuring a number of salad variations – Watercress Salad with Karashi Mustard Wafu Dressing, Green Cabbage Salad and Romaine Hearts with Miso-Mustard Dressing.

There does seem to be a bit of padding in the book, and areas of white space where other books might have photographs. Not that I think recipes should be crammed together, but sometimes it’s a bit much. For instance, the recipe for grilled asparagus takes an entire page, but the ingredients are just asparagus and salt, and the directions are (essentially), put them on the grill for two minutes. The same for garlic cloves on the next page.

If you don’t have access to a good Asian market, some of the recipes are going to be difficult to cook as written. Perusing the Amazon reviews, for example, a number of people complain that some of the more specialized ingredients are very difficult or expensive to source. Still, the basics are not hard to find, and anyone already interested in Japanese cuisine would have a good idea where to look.

Buy the book

Amazon US: The Japanese Grill
Amazon Canada: The Japanese Grill

The One-Block Feast
Ten Speed Press: $24.99

As a counterpoint to the two internationally inspired titles above, The One-Block Feast is an exploration of the art of keeping it local. There are no imported ingredients featuring in these recipes. Instead, the editors took on a challenge: could they take the grounds of the Menlo Park based Sunset Magazine and turn them into the source of four seasonal feasts using only what could be grown or raised in their backyard-sized plot?

Indeed they could. And the story of this journey makes this book – a hybrid how-to guide (covering everything from gardening to chicken raising to beermaking) – an entertaining tale and quite a good cookbook.

When they took on the challenge, one befitting the history of Sunset, they started a blog, where you can still read about their various adventures (http://oneblockdiet.sunset.com). Initially setting out to grow everything for a summer feast, they quickly realized they’d need more time – the wine and cheeses needed aging, and they all needed to learn a lot more, and so it expanded into a year-long project.

What I like about the book is that none of this seems unattainable to anyone with a reasonable amount of backyard space and a little extra time. When they started, they were people working in offices and commuting home each night; they were not veteran homesteaders or experts in any of this. They had the advantages of living in a great climate, granted, and had some good gardening and cooking knowledge, but everything else they had to learn from scratch: making wine and cheese, keeping bees, caring for chickens and a cow.

The book is laid out seasonally, and each of the four sections starts with a series of projects and gardening tips followed by the recipes for the end-of-season feast. So in Summer there are some condensed guides to raising bees and making honey, making fresh cheese and beer, and getting started with chickens. They they follow with some great summery recipes such as Corn Soup with Roasted Poblanos and Zucchini Blossoms, Rosemary Potatoes Anna and Whole Wheat Pizzas.

The other seasons are similar. In Fall you can make wine and vinegar, improve your cheesemaking and grow mushrooms, then cook up a lovely Butternut Squash and Cipollini Onion Soup and Grilled Radicchio and Fennel Salad. In Winter you can make your own salt if you live near the ocean (they used San Francisco Bay) and made escargots from your own garden snails!

The escargots are the only meat, since they were not about to eat their chickens or dairy cow. The rest of the recipes are an eclectic collection of vegetarian dishes, all seasonal (of course), and a nice mix of sophisticated and simple.

Yes, it’s a little hard to raise olives for your own oil if you don’t live in California (though my wife did see a little olive tree for sale at the garden centre here recently and was sorely tempted), but the gardening guide has suggestions for all the North American climate zones, and it’s not like you have to follow the book to the letter. It is an invitation – try growing a few new things (we’re planting edamame this year for the first time), make some wine or some cheese and realize how easy, and satisfying it can be, and see if you can create a local feast of your own.

Buy the book

Amazon US: The One Block Feast
Amazon Canada: The One Block Feast